Hi everyone, and welcome to this special Halloween edition of Britain under the microscope. 欢迎来到【闲话英文】的万圣节特别版. Hi, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu .Hi, everyone.
Is that time of the year?
Yes, so for this Halloween, I thought I'm gonna tell you something that's really scary, frightening, fairies.
Fairies?
Yes, fairies.
Okay.
I'm assuming you're not talking about like Disney versions of fairies 那种仙女.
No, I’m not talking about all of those beautiful little girls with wings that fly around with magic wands, granting wishes. No, I'm talking about fairies.
但迪斯尼就是把这种小仙女小精灵都叫做 fairies.
Yes, so we're talking about the true origins of fairies and a traditional idea of what is a fairy and why they are terrifying.
Now you're speaking my language.
For those of you who have been listening to the show, you know that I'm really into a cold…I'm really into all these supernatural things. So I know for a fact that fairies, the original meaning from medieval Britain is something probably more akin to spirits or even like little monsters.
Pretty much. They were known as the little people or the hidden peoples, people were actually a little bit too scared to mention them by name.
我觉得在中文里它就不应该被翻译成仙女仙子, 因为安澜也知道中文里的“仙” is a very positive word. It means you're above people. You're superior.
Yes.
You're immortal. However, fairies I would say they're mischievous, they are sometimes evil.
They are. To be honest, it is a bit tricky to translate the term because it's changed so much in the centuries really.
我觉得更像精怪, 你说精灵精怪可能会更合适一点.
I think that would probably be the nearest translation to it.
这种山精野怪
Because they were believed to cause disease and play tricks on people, so they were sometimes good, sometimes bad. They were quite almost neutral in many cases.
They are kind of… you said they like playing tricks on people, so they're like kind of tricksters.
They’re basically, I would say a sort of shadow society. So they're like humans. So, as you have good people and bad people, sometimes good people turn bad, and bad people turn good. It's that same sort of idea, fairies are society that live among us. But we cannot see them.
We cannot see them, I think many cultures have that idea. They might not always call them fairies but where’re they from, are they from things in nature?
People… scholars aren't really sure where the idea comes from. Some people think that they are the spirits of the dead. Other people think that they are fallen angels, so they weren't good enough for heaven, but they weren't bad enough for hell.
So they're stuck on earth.
They're pretty much stuck on earth, but I would say they do have their origins in ancient Greece and Rome, where kind of as many societies in ancient times believed that trees, rivers, the natural world had its own spirits, a little bit like Japan nowadays.
Yeah, you say Japan but actually in Chinese lores, there are also lots of stories. When there's a lot of nature, especially if you consider people in the past in ancient times, they didn't really know that much about nature, nature is largely mysterious. You hear rustling in the woods could be hidden people.
Yeah. That is where the idea comes from, the creatures that could be easily offended, but they can also be helpful.
You know you mentioned hidden people, right, isn't that what they call it in Iceland? 在冰岛有一个叫做什么…翻译过来也叫hidden people.
Yeah. So Iceland, they believe in elves, and that's kind of somewhat similar to fairies. But I would say they all have their common roots really, so that creatures that should be, how should I say, you should be careful of offending. They have a lot of power, a lot of influences, they can do some really bad things if you make them angry.
They can be very menacing.
They can be.
One thing I've heard of, I don't know if it's about fairies changeling.
Yes. That is probably one of the sort of more terrifying aspects of the myth, where it was believed that fairies would steal babies or even adults and replace them with a fairy